


What Is And What Should Never Be

by LadyShadowphyre



Series: Something Beautiful [6]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Asexual Amelia, Asexual Character, Demisexual Sam, Demons being dicks, F/M, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Jimmy wouldn't let me make Sam cry, John Winchester's A+ Parenting, M/M, Platonic Soulmates (mentioned), Soulmate AU, Soulmate-Dreams, Threeway Soul Bonds, dean is a good big brother, one-sided soul bonds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 08:20:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11287368
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyShadowphyre/pseuds/LadyShadowphyre
Summary: It should have been a happy call, two soulmates connecting after ten years of waiting. Instead, Sam feels like his stomach is filled with lead. Tag to "For You I'd Bleed Myself Dry".





	What Is And What Should Never Be

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Zetal (Rodinia)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodinia/gifts).



> This ended up being a lot less angsty than I expected it to be.... Oh, well.

**D** OG BLOOD WITH a high sulphur additive. Campus police had been very thorough in their questioning of Sam, but couldn't deny that the RA had seen him fly down the steps early that morning and the blood was too fresh to have been painted across his wall before he left. Brady, it turned out, had spent the night with his on-again off-again girlfriend after getting back together at the bar some time after Sam had turned in. He was understandably freaked out to find that his friend and dorm mate apparently had "a crazy psycho dog-killer" stalking his family and Sam in particular, and hadn't tried to argue when Sam mentioned he'd be getting an apartment off-campus instead of risking putting his dorm mates in danger if he was attacked again.

Dean stood behind him the whole time, backed up his alibi to the campus police, and glared daggers into the housing director until the simpering woman made a "special circumstances" note for Sam to use the scholarship's housing allowance to relocate his belongings to a tiny shoebox apartment off-campus. Dean had helped Sam convince himself not to leave Stanford and "let the bastard win" by psyching him out. Dean had called Bobby on a brand new Nokia and gotten him searching for more permanent anti-demon wards while he helped Sam lay down salt lines along the bottom of the door and single window, locking them in place with long strips of clear packing tape. Dean had given him a new cell phone to match his, explaining about the phone plan and the account set up in Bobby's name that paid the bill with money Dean had been carefully saving since he was fourteen, trying to steal a future he didn't know if he'd live long enough to see...

Dean was leaving.

It was eighteen hundred miles from Palo Alto to Sioux Falls, and another six hundred from Sioux Falls to Pontiac, Illinois. If they were lucky, Bobby would have all the information they needed to ward a house sixty ways from Sunday against the supernatural, and Dean's first stop after that was, per Sam's pleading, to practice setting those wards on the Novak family's house before high-tailing it back to Palo Alto again to ward Sam's apartment. Dean was a little obvious with the way he clearly didn't want to just take off and leave Sam alone in the wake of such blatant evidence of a demonic salker, but Sam knew how far Dean would have to drive and prodded him to get going so he could make it as far as possible before he had to stop for the night.

"And don't you dare be stupid and try to drive the whole way in one shot, jerk," Sam told him, glaring with his arms folded across his chest to keep himself from reaching out and grabbing his brother back into another crushing hug. "It'll take at least two days for Bobby to get those files together and you know it!"

"If I got there sooner, I could help research," Dean muttered petulantly, but he caved easily to Sam's puppy eyes. "You better call me if anything else happens, bitch. You get so much as a headache and I wanna know about it!"

"I'll call you with Jimmy's address, after I talk to him about all this," Sam assured him. "Now get going so you can at least make it out of California before sunset."

Shut up in his tiny, unfurnished apartment with his meager belongings and various textbooks for class stacked in the middle of the room, Sam made himself take several deep breaths before he could sit down and pull out both his old and new cell phones. Dean's new phone number was already programmed in, so Sam spent several minutes transferring Jimmy's number and the numbers he had for Bobby and Pastor Jim and wiping them from the old phone. He left the numbers for Brady and his friends Zach and Becky in his old phone to keep using for anything that wasn't hunting or soulmate related, and then he just sat there and stared at the new phone until the alarm on his old one beeped quarter to four.

Nerves clawed at him, twisting his stomach, even as he carefully brought up the number on his new phone and pressed Call. It rang three times, each ring twisting the knots in his stomach tighter, until the line abruptly clicked open and a slightly breathless female voice greeted him with, "Novak residence."

"Uh, hi," Sam started awkwardly. "Is this, uh, Amelia Novak?"

"Yes it is," the woman, Amelia, said pleasantly. "May I ask who's calling?"

"I'm sorry..." he apologized automatically, swallowing. Here it goes, moment of truth.... "My name is Sam, uh, Sam Winchester... Jimmy said you know about me..."

"Oh, my goodness!" Amelia gasped. "Sam! Yes, of course, I'm so glad you called! Is today your birthday? Jimmy's been kicking himself for months that he didn't think to ask in his dream."

"Oh, um, yeah, today's it," Sam stammered a little, ducking his head even though she couldn't see him through the phone. "I, uh, forgot to ask when his birthday is, too. I know he's ten years older, but..."

"July tenth," Amelia said, and Sam could hear the smile in her voice. "And happy birthday, Sam. It's no wonder you two are mutuals, you're both adorable when you're flustered."

"Uh...." Sam blinked, feeling his cheeks heat up. "Thank you?" Amelia giggled.

"I'm going to like you a lot, I can tell," she declared. Her tone turned apologetic as she added, "Jimmy's not home just yet, but he shouldn't be too much longer unless the construction on 5th snarled up traffic more than usual."

"It's alright, ma'am, he told me six o'clock, I just..." Sam paused and swallowed. "I just needed to call. I'm sorry, I shouldn't have--"

"Sam!" Amelia called through the phone, interrupting him. "First off, call me Amelia or Lia, not ma'am. You're Jimmy's soulmate, which makes you family and gives you nickname privileges, understand?"

"Yes, ma'am, er, Amelia," Sam answered, flushing at her soft giggle.

"We'll work on it," she promised, making him feel slightly dizzy. "Secondly, you're always welcome to call or visit whenever you want, and that goes for your brother, too. Jimmy said you told him your brother's name is Dean?"

"Yes, that's right," Sam said, nodding despite the lack of visual. "I... that's really good to hear, Amelia, I..." He trailed off and scrubbed his free hand back through his hair. "How much did Jimmy tell you about his soulmate dream?"

"He told me that his soulmate was named Sam, male, and ten years younger than him," she said carefully. "At least, that's what he said in my dream. And we've talked since then, mostly about you and what little you told him of your family." She hesitated audibly. "Sam, is something wrong? Are you in some sort of trouble? Do you need us to come and get you?"

"No!" he gasped, shocked. "I mean, no, I'm not in trouble. Jimmy said he'd been worried, but I promise I'm fine. I'm, uh, attending Stanford on a full ride scholarship, actually, so probably a lot better than I might've thought I'd be when I was eight."

"Wow," Amelia said, sounding surprised and impressed. "Jimmy said you were bright, but that's quite an accomplishment, Sam."

"Thanks," he mumbled shyly. "I, uh, told Jimmy about it in my dream, but he wouldn't remember that..." He trailed off as the sound of a door closing and a male voice calling out indistinctly filtered faintly through the phone.

"In the kitchen, Jimmy!" Amelia called, confirming Sam's guess and sending the jumbled knots in his stomach twisting again. "You're just in time. You have a phone call~!"

"Amelia!" Sam yelped, face heating for what felt like the tenth time in as many minutes at the suggestive, almost sing-song tone she was using. Amelia only laughed at him.

"Adorable," she repeated cheerfully, and then, "Here's Jimmy."

"Hello?" Jimmy said, the cell phone reception only slightly distorting the familiar voice from Sam's dream, and he felt some of the knots ease as his stomach fluttered oddly.

"Hi, Jimmy," he said, smiling almost unconsciously at the bare wall of his apartment. "It's Sam. I hope this isn't a bad time...?"

"Sam," Jimmy breathed, the sheer relief and joy in his voice going a long way to easing the remaining knots in Sam's stomach. "Yes, now's fine. Perfect, even. I...." An audible swallow was followed by a shaky, indrawn breath. "I'm really glad you called."

"I promised I would," Sam said softly, curling the fingers of his free hand into his palm to still the twitching urge to reach out to the older man. A little more sheepishly, he added, "I just hope Castiel understands my decision to call you first."

"Castiel?" Jimmy asked, puzzled, and then continued in realization, "Is that our third? They spoke this time?"

"Uh-huh," Sam tucked the phone between his ear and shoulder and reached for one of his few spare notebooks. "Apparently eight-year-old me guessed right about the language barrier. Castiel said they didn't want to risk hurting us with their voice, so they practiced in other soulmate dreams we appeared in since only Castiel's soulmates would be able to see them. The dream focus being from someone else's soul acted as a buffer to keep us from getting hurt accidentally."

"That fits in with what I was able to dig up about their whole..." Jimmy trailed off, either not sure how to describe Castiel's extended family or not wanting to specifically say "angels" where Amelia could hear. "Did Castiel say how to get in touch with them?"

"Pray," Sam answered, just a little cheekily, and chuckled at Jimmy's huff of laughter. "Apparently there's a ban on angels coming to Earth for anything less than a 'dire emergency', but Castiel can hear our prayers, and if we direct the prayers to Castiel specifically then only God can 'overhear' what we say. Oh, and they can visit us in our dreams and we'll remember them this time." Sam frowned thoughtfully. "Actually, one of the things I plan to ask is if Castiel can pull both of us into a shared dream."

"I can see how that would be useful, if it's possible," Jimmy offered. "Cuts down on potential miscommunications if we're all in the conversation together."

"Well, yeah, that," Sam said, fumbling to get out a pen. "And it's not exactly fair that I got to see you as you look now, but you're stuck picturing me as a tiny kid."

"I get the feeling there's a reason you're not offering to fix that in person," Jimmy said carefully, his tone just a little neutral. Sam cringed.

"I really wish I could," he whispered, then cleared his throat. "How's your suspension of disbelief on things like ghosts, wendigos, skinwalkers, shapeshifters... demons...."

"Eight year old you mentioned that last one," Jimmy said, back to sounding puzzled. "And, well, Castiel makes it pretty easy to suspend disbelief.... Why?"

"A demon killed my mom when I was six months old," Sam said bluntly, verbally ripping off the band-aid. "The same year you had your dream, I found out that all the awful creatures of myths and legends were real and the reason Dad moved us around so much was because he hunted them, and was training Dean to hunt them, too." He gave a quiet huff of slightly bitter amusement. "It was a hell of a Christmas that year, and it never really got better until I left for Stanford last year."

"I hope you getting into Stanford at seventeen isn't what I'm supposed to be disbelieving, Sam, because I already knew you were extremely bright," Jimmy teased.

"Full ride scholarship, too," Sam grinned, though the expression faded. "The problem is, something definitely demonic in origin seems to have an interest in me if the bloody message it left on my dorm wall is anything to go by, and the last thing I want is to get you and Amelia and Claire on Hell's radar if I can help it."

"I told you about Claire?" Jimmy interrupted, startled. "Did I just tell you she exists, or--?"

"Claire Samantha Novak, and yes, I would be honored to be her godfather," Sam filled in as he flipped open the notebook. "If you can give me your address, I can send Dean your way with any paperwork you need from me, along with some wards for your house, just in case."

"Leaving me to the mercy of your overprotective big brother?" Jimmy drawled, but he rattled off the address as requested. "How will I recognize him?"

"Dark blonde hair, green eyes, jeans and a beat up leather jacket, and driving a 1967 Chevy Impala that he treats like his baby, and you can tell him that I said if he tries to threaten you I'll kick his ass," Sam said with a chuckle. "Okay, grab a pen and write down these phone numbers."

"Hang on..." Jimmy trailed off, and there was the faint rustle and clatter of someone rummaging through unknown clutter. "Okay, hit me."

Sam carefully counted off first his own new cell phone number, then Dean's, and then added Bobby's home number as a precaution. "The first one is mine, the second is Dean's, and the third is our surrogate uncle, Bobby Singer. With me stuck out in California right now, if anything happens then Dean or Bobby are the ones to call first."

"Got it," Jimmy murmured. There was the faint sound of a pencil scratching over paper, and then, "You know, from anyone else besides you I'd be saying this was nine different kinds of crazy."

"You're aiming low," Sam told him ruefully. "I've lived it and there are still days I can't believe it's all real." He sighed. "Dad insisted on secrecy about everything, probably would have told me to lie to you if he didn't outright forbid contact, but... I don't want to start our relationship off on a base of lies, even if they'd be more believable." He hesitated then, and swallowed. "I'm sorry you got stuck with me."

"I'm not," Jimmy said, softly but firmly. "Crazy or not, no matter what may or may not happen, I do not regret sharing a soul bond with you, Sam. And hey, maybe Castiel will have some ideas on how to protect you from your 'evil stalker'."

"I'm more worried about protecting you and Amelia and Claire," Sam told him frankly. "But yeah, it probably can't hurt to ask."

"Protect yourself, too, Sam, not just us," Jimmy insisted. "I'd hate to lose you before I've even had you."

"Should you be saying that in front of your wife and daughter?" Sam asked after a moment where he tried to figure out if the innuendo had been deliberate or if he was reading too much into the words thanks to Dean's upbringing.

"My daughter is three and currently distracted by her mac'n'cheese," Jimmy said dryly. "As for my wife, ours is a relationship best described as 'best friends with occasional cuddles'. I think she can handle the idea that I might fancy getting a lot closer to you now that you're all grown up. Sam? Are you... did you just squeak?"

Sam - who had not been expecting an answer like that despite the tender touch in the dream - had, in fact, made a sound of surprise in a register he shouldn't have been able to reach after his voice change that could have possibly been described as a squeak. Okay, embarrassing and not at all manly, but whatever, he was owning it. He cleared his throat and hoped his voice would come out in its more usual register. "Sorry. I probably should have expected that...."

"Too soon?" Jimmy asked, a little uncertainly. "Or... I know that being raised Catholic made it difficult to reconcile faith, doctrine, expectations and reality...."

"About having a male soulmate?" Sam finished. He sighed, casting his eyes up at the water-stained ceiling as he tried to organize his thoughts. "That's... not really an issue for me. Dad's functionally atheist since he doesn't necessarily believe in any deity and the ones he knows about he'd just try and find a way to kill them, mostly because the beings and creatures he runs across are killing humans, but also because he's got this mindset of 'human good, not human evil' and refuses to consider anything outside that black and white definition of the world, and he tried to raise me and Dean to believe the same way. Even with his Marine Corps background, I'm actually more nervous about him finding out about Castiel than that my other soulmate is a man." Well, assuming John ever deigned to talk to him again. If Dean was serious about not being the "good little soldier" anymore, Sam wasn't going to let himself hope for a reconciliation with the man any time soon. "And anyway, I've always been more about the emotional connection with someone than what their gender was or what they looked like." He flushed faintly. "Though, uh... you're definitely nice to look at."

"Really? So you don't care that I'm a man, you just need a stronger emotional connection between us?" Jimmy asked, sounding torn between dismayed and hopeful.

"You being my soulmate means I'm halfway there already," Sam assured him, smiling a little. "I just want to get to know you better and let you get to know me better when we can both remember what we learn about each other, you know? And, uh, the whole warding against demons thing, and keeping them from tracking me to you, so...."

"So you won't be visiting over the summer," Jimmy guessed, sounding disappointed. Sam bit his lower lip, hesitating.

"There's always Christmas break," he offered carefully. "And dreams in the meantime, if Castiel can manage it. I just... I need you three to be safe or I might actually go crazy from worrying. Bad enough that Dean's out there hunting without me to watch his back, but if something happened to you because of me..."

"Hey," Jimmy broke in gently, and there was the sound of footsteps as if he was walking with the phone. "I can't promise nothing will happen to us - life doesn't work like that, and I'm pretty sure you know that better than most - but I can promise this, Sam. If anything bad happens to me or Amelia or Claire, supernatural or otherwise, it is in no way your fault. Okay? Forewarned is forearmed and all that, and you're warning me of the possibility of danger  _ and _ sending your brother out to help put up protections on the house. You're not putting us in any danger we weren't already in, and I still don't regret being bonded to you. Do you regret getting me?"

"No," Sam admitted, his voice thick and strained from the lump rising in his throat. "No, I'm.... pretty damn grateful I got you."

"Well, I'm 'pretty damn grateful' I got you, too," Jimmy said. From further off, a child's voice piped up saying, "Daddy bad word!" Sam choked on a laugh as Jimmy groaned quietly. Apparently however far the older man had gone wasn't far enough for curious little ears.

"I should let you go eat dinner," Sam said. "I can call again next week, if... if you want."

"I'd like that," Jimmy said. "And from the looks Amelia's shooting me, she'd love the chance to talk to you again, too."

"You bet your buttons I do!" Amelia called from somewhere further away, startling another laugh out of Sam.

"W-wouldn't want to disappoint her," he managed, finally feeling the last of the knots in his gut relax completely. "I usually have class Wednesday afternoons, so maybe eight-thirty? Give you time to have dinner?"

"I look forward to it," Jimmy told him with so much sincerity that Sam couldn't help but believe it. Nothing was magically okay, and there were still demons and other supernatural predators out there, but for at least that one moment, Sam could believe that everything would be just fine.

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, kids! ~hums the Time Warp~ [This is the phone that Dean gave Sam.](https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/564x/78/2c/2d/782c2db0d18603239a4a25cbefa956a5.jpg) We're looking at sixteen years ago, May of 2001, when cell phones were only just starting to become palm-sized instead of brick-sized and texting was a hot new feature. No camera feature built in yet and only a couple of ringtone options. A far cry from the pocket-sized computers available today, but still pretty cutting edge for the time.
> 
> Let me know if you want to see Dean's meeting with the Novak family!


End file.
